Teaching new words using collocations has been acknowledged as an effective way in vocabulary classes

2.4 Using collocations as a new way of vocabulary teaching
In order to situate collocations within the area of vocabulary teaching, it will be taken the concept of „word‟ as a point of departure (see Carter & McCarthy 1988). What exactly does it mean to know a word? Nation (1990:31) proposes a list of the different aspects of knowledge needed, as presented in figure below. The R and P stand respectively for receptive (listening and reading) and productive (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) knowledge:
Form Spoken form R What does the word sound like?
P How is the word pronounced?
Written form R What does the word look like?
P How is the word written and spelled?
Position Grammatical Patterns R In what patterns does the word occur?
P In what patterns must we use the word?
Collocations R What words or types of words can be expected before or after the word?
P What words or types of words must we use with this word?
Function Frequency R How common is the word?
P How often should the word be used?
Appropriateness R Where would we expect to meet this word?
P Where can this word be used?
Meaning Concept R What does the word mean?
P What word should be used to express this meaning?
Associations R What other words does this word make us think of?
P What other words could we use instead of this one?

Figure 1. What is involved in knowing a word (Nation 1990:31)

As illustrated in the table, Nation uses the four general classification criteria drawing from George (1983): „form‟, „position‟, „function‟, and „meaning‟. Unfortunately, some of these aspects tend to be given more prominence in the foreign language classroom, like „form‟ and „meaning‟, while others are hardly ever mentioned, which seems to be the case of „position‟ (grammatical patterns and collocations). Nattinger affirms that the meaning of a word is closely related to the word‟s associations and argues that „the whole notion of collocations is extremely important for acquiring vocabulary and has yet to be exploited to its full potential‟ (1988:70). As the table shows, collocations, as well as all other aspects of a word, can be taught in relation to both receptive and productive knowledge (Nattinger 1988:75), the difference between the two being in the type of activity dealt with in class.
Thus, the main reason why the present study lays emphasis on collocations is that although their importance is to a great extent acknowledged (Sinclair 1991; Cowie 1998a), not much attention has been given to them in the teaching context. In order to further elucidate the term, a literature review is provided in the next section.
A particular language features lexical items such as phrasal verbs, idioms, compound nouns, and collocations as well as single words. Some of these units such as idioms, collocations, and proverbs tend to be syntactically fixed. Among these multiword units, collocations have been the most neglected (Farghal & Obiedat, 1995).
Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) describes collocations as “strings of specific lexical items that co-occur with a mutual expectancy greater than a chance” (p.87). This suggests that in a language some words are naturally and arbitrarily used together; for instance in English for the noun “suicide”; the verb “commit” is used. These groups of words are difficult to learn and they should be taught in class and should be dealt with as a part of the vocabulary learning task (Lewis, Morgan 2000). It is important to point out that collocations should be a part of syllabuses since language involves both single words and a great number of collocations. Woolard (2000) mentioned this emphasis on collocations by saying that “Learning more vocabulary is not just learning new words, it is often learning familiar words in new combinations.”
Although the place of collocations has existed through the years, it has started to be an appealing area for researchers just recently. Ellis (1997), for instance, argues that if foreign language learners want to reach a good level of competency, they should be able to speak idiomatically; they should use frequent and familiar collocations. Because speech is divided into these meaningful units. He believes that when learners have collocations in their minds, they can retrieve these collocations as wholes or chains from the long-term memory. Although, collocations are longer than single words and thus they may seem to be more difficult to recall than single words, according to Ellis (1997), single words and collocations have the same underlying principle and they both need repetition.
One of the first researchers to mention collocations was Richards (1976). He presented some assumptions related to the lexical competence in order to answer the questions “What does it mean to know a word?” and “What is involved in knowing a word?” and he explained them in detail in order to provide some guidelines for vocabulary instruction. Richards defined “learning a word” as being able to guess how frequently a word may come up in context and knowing which associations that a particular word has. This notion entails the knowledge of collocation. If the word fruit is known, it is expected that the words sweet/ ripe/ green (not ripe) are known as well. Then, it can be assumed that sweet/ ripe/ green are known by association,
Richards also assumed that if the network of associations between words is known, the word is known. He emphasized that words do not stand in isolation. If a word’s relationship with other words were known, its meaning would be clearer, because meanings are better understood if they are associated with other words.
From what he claimed, it can be inferred that teaching words with their associations would cause better understanding rather than teaching them in isolation.
Similarly, Judd (1978) believed that words that are taught by themselves are generally not retained, so students must be aware of the linguistic environment in which a word appears. He favoured massive vocabulary instruction in the early stages and stated that vocabulary should be presented in a natural linguistic context.
Lewis (1993) and Nattinger and DeCarrico (1992) brought further insights to the nature of collocations. According to Lewis (2000) “Noticing language as chunks aids storage as chunks. It therefore aids acquisition, as some of this prefabricated language is then available to the learner both for use as prefabricated items and as raw material for syntactic analysis...”.
Among the key principles of his lexical approach, he stated that collocation should be integrated within the syllabus. He believed language consists of multiword chunks, so teachers’ responsibility should be raising the students’ awareness of these chunks. Lewis (1997) argued against the traditional dichotomy of language into grammar and vocabulary and dismissed it as being misguided. He believed language is made up of four different kinds of lexical items namely; Words, Polywords / Collocations / Institutional utterances / Sentence frames or heads. As it can be seen, in this division collocations constitute a significant part of language. However, Lewis (1997) stated that collocations have mostly been seen as marginal and ignored.
Richards (1976) also emphasized the importance of learners’ need of lexis and collocation and he was not in favour of word boundaries. According to Richards speakers of a language not only recognize the general probability of occurrence of a word, but also at the same time they recognize the probability of words being associated with other words. But, since students generally learn words through definitions or in isolation, their chance of using an appropriate collocation or remembering them decreases. This is one of the factors that hinder communication and comprehension. This constitutes another argument in favour of focusing on collocations while presenting new vocabulary (Richards, 1976).
Hill (2000) strongly believed in the idea of the power of collocations in our mental lexicon in creating and comprehending texts. He believes that the way words combine in collocations is essential in every language and this strengthens its importance. Hill (2000) also points out that 70% of what we hear, say, read or write is some kind of fixed expressions. He also compares native speakers with second language learners. When speaking or listening, native speakers employ ready-made language from their mental lexicon because of their multi-word units’ competency.
If learners were familiarized with multi-word units, they would employ the same process in their mental lexicon.
One of the advantages of learning words in collocations is that students can be made aware of the word partnership and hence, when they need to record a new vocabulary item, they would record the elements of its collocations in a single package. This is helpful for students, because those words generally appear together in the same order. “The recognition, generation, and effective recording of collocations are essential elements of the lexical approach.” (Lewis, 1997, p. 257). According to Lewis (1997) when presenting new words, the grammar of the word should be explored, meaning that its collocations should be learned. Since collocations are not systematic but determined by logic, it is difficult for students to guess which word takes which word, so when they learn a new one it is better to provide them with a collocate. Lewis (1997) also suggested that it is easy to learn words in collocations in the first place, because, later it would not be difficult for learners to separate them and to use them separately. On the other hand, if they learn words in isolation, it would be hard for a learner to guess the collocation.
Furthermore, researchers, teachers and others involved in foreign language learning are paying special attention to foreign language vocabulary acquisition (Zu, 2009). It is believed that having a large and varied vocabulary is the sign of communicative competence and it is one of the central aspects of language learning (McCrostie, 2007). Like grammar, vocabulary knowledge is one of the elements of language (Nation & Waring, 1997). It should be seen as an essential part of learning a foreign language since it paves the way to communication. That is, even a sufficient knowledge of vocabulary alone could be enough for a relative degree of communication to occur (Wallace, 1982). Moreover, Celce–Murcia and Rosensweig (1989) have the same opinion that vocabulary should be accepted as a central element in language instruction from the beginning stages. They more ever confirm that having an adequate stock of vocabulary with a minimum number of structures usually helps the learner more not only in reading comprehension, but also in attaining more efficient communication than having a perfect command of structures with an inadequate amount of vocabulary.
With the recognition of the importance of vocabulary, many techniques and approaches to teaching and learning vocabulary have emerged, and collocation is just one of those techniques. It’s a widely accepted idea that collocations are very important part of knowledge of second language acquisition and they are essential to non-native speakers of English in order to speak or write fluently and accurately (Jaén, 2007). Skrzypek (2009) indicates the importance of collocation by stating that one of the criteria for knowing a word is being aware of other words with which it keeps company. In addition, Shin and Nation (2008) explain one of the reasons as to why teachers and learners should be interested in collocations being that collocations improve learners’ language fluency and ensure native-like selection.
English language teaching has changed its perspective on the teaching and learning of vocabulary in foreign language classes. A word’s collocates with others is thought to be one of the significant aspects related to words besides multiple meanings, synonymy, connotations and register according to dictionary makers (Fernández etal., 2009). Besides being difficult to acquire for both foreign language learners (Chan & Liou, 2005) and second language learners, collocation plays an important role in language acquisition and knowledge of collocation contributes to the difference between native speakers and non-native speakers (Shei & Pain, 2000). Also, collocations are really important to language learners to be better understood (Deveci, 2004; Wallace, 1982). To know the meaning of a word most effectively, students need to know its associations with other words (Nattinger, 1988).